Castaways
by coincident
Summary: This is the city where men are mended. Itachi and Shisui, after the massacre. ItaShi/AU/one-shot.


**A/N: **This story could be alternatively titled "The One Where Itachi and Shisui Run Away to Suna." My stupidity is alarming even to me at times. I have no justification for this except that there are no happy endings for these poor bastards, and I can never resist a really stupid premise.

If you even get through this sad offering at the altar of the OTP, I will adore you.

**AU Elements**: I guess it technically qualifies as a for-want-of-a-nail story--the divergence point being, idiotically, "What if instead of letting him go through with the massacre Shisui spirited Itachi away to Suna?"

**Disclaimer: **The line in the summary is Sylvia Plath, and the opening quote is, naturally, Shearwater's "Castaways." I love how I'm treating this like a real fic. Don't laugh.

* * *

_  
The hollowness of the flags and gods_

_That are raised in the air_

_In the wake of their raging_

_--_

_you are running from a rising tide_

_you are castaways_

**~X~**

The child is black-haired and dark-eyed and Itachi cannot, simply _cannot_ let go of him. His little squirms and the way he burrows his nose into Itachi's neck are dangerous things, leaves laid over traps in the ground, and Itachi should definitely know this by now but he still finds himself falling like a novice every time.

"Itachi-sensei?" says the child, and wriggles around to look at him with bright, birdlike eyes. "Are you okay? You're squeezing me--"

"I--I am sorry," says Itachi immediately. The child looks curious. Then, as if indexing a footnote at the end of a line, he leans forward and places his hand on Itachi's cheek.

"Don't look so sad, sensei," he says blithely, words from someone who has never been so himself. "I'm going home now, okay? See you tomorrow!"

"All right. Give my regards to your mother."

"I will! Bye-bye--and you too, Shisui-san!"

Shisui, watching them from the other end of the room, jolts and offers a fakely jaunty wave. "Nice seeing you," he calls.

Itachi remains kneeling on the floor with his arms wide and empty for a few seconds, which stretch into minutes without his noticing. The little boy's footsteps have long receded when he finally brings himself to blink his eyes and say, "Goodbye, Sasuke."

**~X~**

"It was your idea," Shisui screams at him."You were the one who wanted this."

_I never wanted this_, Itachi wants to say, but it's a lie, and they both know it. Itachi wanted it, and once Shisui figured out that Itachi wanted something he could never just leave it the hell alone; he had to make it happen in the most dramatic way possible--which is of course how they ended up here, scouring sand from their Suna apartment and sniping at each other as the little granules lodge themselves in their eyes. Itachi hates this part. He drops his broom and digs the heel of his hand into his eye socket, but it's too late; the little trickle of water has already escaped. Shisui throws down his own broom and snaps, "Oh, for the love of--" and Itachi whirls on his feet and gets out, because he knows that's how it's supposed to go, and he always does things the way you're supposed to do them.

The problem with Suna is that there's nowhere to go but the rooftop. Itachi doesn't like the B-movie implications this retreat associates itself with, but his options aren't great and the view, naturally, is. The city spread out beneath their building is exactly the magic-carpet net of lights Shisui promised it would be. Still, it's a _city_ above all else, and to Itachi, a villager all his life, it's still unnerving to see the sheer amount of dwellings, like the burrows of some furious animal carved into the dunes. Suna grows in layers of sediment. In the daylight the city is less magic carpet and more patchwork prairie spread over the world, an old quilt left out to dry and then bleached out of its quotidian colors by sun, sand, stone.

Itachi leans on the railing outside the rooftop greenhouse and draws his headcovering over his mouth, as he has learned to do by this point. Eddies of wind come from god knows where and buffet the sand outwards into the night, and seen like this--golden holes in the blue-black firmament--it's very beautiful, a steeper, sadder sort of loveliness than the sort he left behind in Konoha. He reaches out and catches a few grains in his fingertips, and when Shisui's arm snakes around him and draws him casually back from the ege he feels almost affronted.

"Don't go that close," says Shisui absently, still in many ways an imperious six-year-old chiding a four-year-old cousin. Itachi dislikes being reminded of this enough to turn around and kiss him, a moment before he realizes that this might be construed as some sort of apology and that's the _last _impression he wants to give at this point; he would almost rather have the patronizing relative. Shisui likes apologies, though, particularly of this sort.

"So, done with your tantrum for now?" he asks against Itachi's lips, and his hands are everywhere at once before Itachi knows what to do with himself. This is the sort of ridiculously offensive familiarity only a very old friend can perpetuate, and Shisui, the oldest friend he's got, has never been particularly shy about Itachi's body. It probably has something to do with the fact that he was comfortable with it before he was comfortable with Itachi himself—bandaging a scrape, icing a burn, tying a ponytail—and really, before he was comfortable with himself, either. There's a special back-burner kind of romance to an old friendship, and this is what Itachi lets simmer in his veins as Shisui's hands lap at his waist, little flames, casually divesting him of various outer layers of clothing with an unrehearsed, careless precision.

But Shisui has, among other things, an absolutely _horrible _sense of timing, and so in the middle of this gracelessly enthusiastic encounter he chooses to start his, "So you know I feel bad about Sasuke, but—"

—and so Itachi slides away from the railing and makes his way back down the stairs, because he just doesn't want to deal with this right now. He hears ricocheting footsteps behind him and pauses in the stairwell, and then Shisui's form is there, silhouetted against the starless sky and traced in orange radiance from the city lights below them. Shisui, at seventeen, is a little taller than the average Suna citizen. Long robes flatter his lanky frame as Konoha police fatigues never did. He forgets his hat everywhere, so at this point his skin has darkened to the color of caramel. The russet streaks in his hair complete the aesthetic. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, Itachi is struck anew by how _perfect _Shisui looks in this setting, as if he was born in Suna, as if he's never been anywhere else.

"You're not running away," says Shisui, voice seamlessly integrated into the tangled wind. "Stay here."

"I wish to go to sleep," says Itachi. "There is no purpose achieved in talking to you like this."

Shisui takes the steps down two at a time and grabs Itachi's wrist as he crosses him, and when they reach their apartment he sits him down firmly on the sofa and bustles around making tea, which is what Shisui does when he's lost for what else to do. But today he sits next to Itachi and watches with a maniacally concerned expression as he drinks, which is alarming enough to make Itachi set his teacup down and wait for the worst.

"So I was thinking," says Shisui, and inwardly, Itachi groans, "I was…I mean…I think you should quit your job."

For a second, Itachi really has no idea what to say, so he retrieves his teacup and takes another sip of the tea. It tastes awful. Too sweet. Shisui has no concept of moderation in cooking or really, in anything else, come to think of it.

"Your job at the _Academy_," says Shisui, as if Itachi has any other.

It's not good at all. Itachi swallows and pushes the cup away.

"You're getting too attached to Sasuke," Shisui is saying, apparently trying to pretend that what he's saying makes sense.

"…'Getting.'"

"Oh, don't shoot your venomous inverted commas at me," snaps Shisui suddenly. "You know what I mean. You live in the same village as him—isn't that enough? You don't need to be around him all the time."

This is an unexpectedly hurtful statement, and for a moment Itachi is so surprised he forgets to be angry. "Shisui. He is my brother."

"He's your student now. You agreed to it. _We_ agreed to it, actually, although I'm not sure that word means anything to you at this point. But you said you weren't going to snap and act all—" He waves his hand, intensely frustrated. "All stupid about this. He's attached to you as a teacher, can't you just leave it at that?"

What this means is that Sasuke never fails to give Itachi his goodbye hugs, and that Itachi is the one sending home his reports rather than opening them at home, and that Sasuke's foster mother is awkwardly understanding and sends him cookies that he and Shisui never eat. What this means is that Shisui, who works nights, turns up every day to collect Itachi from the Academy and glare at him accusingly, as if his continued longing will be enough to break the jutsu and send the old life back into Sasuke's brain, the whitewater crash of memories that would erase what is left of him entirely.

Itachi doesn't know what to say. Shisui, for his part, makes a disgusted noise and stands up, and Itachi knows he will pace around the tiny apartment many, many times before snarling out things that cut—things that sound like _only did this for you _and _should have known you'd do this_ and _always have to clean up your mess_—and at times like this Itachi doesn't know his cousin-brother-friend-lover at all, and he thinks he doesn't know Itachi either. Outside, the orange light pulses serenely and washes the blue from their windows, and inside, the storm beats on like a heartbeat, close-contained and stained with lifeblood, as acrid as the resonance of consonants on Shisui's tongue.

**~X~**

Shisui was the one who found out. He had been assigned to do it, and he never failed to do what was assigned.

"You little fuck," was what he'd said, and then he'd punched Itachi in the face. Shinobi never did things like this. Only friends. This, ultimately, was what reassured Itachi enough to fist his hands around the straps of Shisui's breastplate and rest his head on Shisui's chest, just briefly, a gesture he could remember making at a very young age. It had been how he spoke during wartime, when words had seemed insufficient—but right there, at the bank of the Nakano, it meant the same thing.

_Please don't leave me._

_I want to get out of here. _

_Help me_.

And Shisui, so angry he was choking on his own tears, had responded without thinking and pulled Itachi closer, because that was what he had done as a six-year-old—"_Don't worry, Itachi; we'll be fine, okay? Okay?_"—and that was what he would do now; that was what he would always do, and Itachi could say that with more certainty than he could predict his own actions. It had been only a moment. They had folded together like the wings of a moth and separated just as quickly, dividing along the flare of light from the shining river. Then there had been endless logistics, punctuated by the things Shisui would not say and Itachi heard anyway.

"How long was this planned?"

_Were you ever going to tell me?_

"Were you planning to kill all of us?"

_Me, too? _

"How?"

_Why?_

Itachi had answered everything. And then Shisui had broken the professional code they had somehow managed to maintain and asked, softly, "Doesn't it hurt you?" and Itachi wanted to scream at him, wanted to throttle him, for asking the one thing he shouldn't have, because no one—not the Sandaime, not the ANBU members, not Danzo—no one had asked him this question, and so he had stopped being prepared to answer it.

Shisui had said, "I'm not leaving you."

Said, "I'm getting you out of here."

Said, "I'm going to help you."

The next few days had been a riptide of quicksilver experiences for Itachi, but Shisui had been at the center of all of them, as it seemed he always was in Itachi's memories—Shisui speaking to the Sandaime, the blackmail threat as sweet as sugar candy in his mouth, the saccharine vowel curves of _Let your ANBU do it, and tell the village what happened, if you dare_—Shisui reading over an ANBU captain's shoulder as he penned the Leave of Settlement to Sunagakure—Shisui, lips a thin line as he ripped the Uchiha insignia from his clothing, leaving frayed threads in the fabric like the ragged flesh from a torn-away limb.

"We're leaving," he had said, and he was a youthful fifteen, steady on his feet, holding his Uchiha crest out like a sacrificial heart; how could anyone have refused him? "We're taking Sasuke, too. If you try to stop us, we won't hesitate to sell you out—to the clan, or to other villages."

"Itachi would not—" someone had broken in, and Shisui's smile was a vicious, glittering thing.

"Well, no," he agreed, "but I would."

The Leave of Settlement read, "Uchiha Itachi, Uchiha Shisui, and Uchiha Sasuke, granted official Leave of Settlement to Sunagakure, and discharged honorably from active shinobi duty."

The Sandaime had tears in his eyes when they left, and Itachi would always remember his murmured, "Take care of him," as he held them awkwardly. At the time, he had thought he was addressing him, since Sasuke, eight years old and sleeping, had been crushed in his arms—but later he would realize, navigating the parchment edges of the memory, that he had almost certainly been speaking to Shisui.

**~X~**

Konoha was a village of sight—eyes narrowed at the morse shadows of clouds in the sky, squinting into a tapestry of leaves—but in Suna Itachi has learned for the first time what it means to fall in love with the idea of sound. Now, in the middle of the pale blue ocean that is their double bed, he closes his eyes and knows with certainty that there is a storm coming, without having to confirm it with his vision. Scythes of wind sweep across the city outside. He can almost hear the answering sparkle of lights in their defiance; the city will stand, even as the wind whirls the sand into a devil's dance and the sky shutters like an eye in the face of all that golden, rippling powder. These desert storms announce their coming in a million fluctuations of air and dust, as if the very land will speak to you when you stop to listen, and Itachi relishes this: that for the first time in his life, his sight is a secondary sense.

He is so absorbed in the conversation of the elements outside that he doesn't hear when Shisui comes in, moving aside blankets in a smooth, shearing motion, a lone rower in the midst of the sea.

"Hey," he says, closed contrite voice. Shisui has never been subtle. He apologizes as he did when he was young, shoving the words across to Itachi like an Academy student surrendering his dessert. "I'm sorry, okay?"

Itachi opens his eyes. Shisui is dressed for work—nondescript grey robes, sandals, the shadow of a kunai belt visible under his ribs. Civilian life was strange to both of them at first; their bodies were tuned instruments and it was difficult to set them down for a new song; but now they inhabit their new roles with such familiarity it's as if they were born to grow into them. Perhaps they were. Shisui, after all, loves the Suna nights as Itachi knows he never loved police duty.

"It's a _city_," he used to say, when they'd first arrived. "The bars! The music! It's nothing like Konoha. I could get used to this."

And he had, sharingan activated to watch the bartenders mix their drinks, until he could stir daiquiris with the best of them and they had laughingly inducted the sixteen-year-old into their guild. Itachi, with his assessing teachers' eye, can see very clearly that Shisui is the best there is. He runs his bar with easy authority. When things become rowdy, he draws on the reservoir of skills which have already begin to fade—kunai, shuriken, shunshin—and so he has picked up a reputation for running a tight ship, and this—this is something he tells Itachi with such pride that it draws a smile out of him, water from ice, melting and free-flowing and such a long-awaited thaw.

"It's nice having a _good _reputation for once, and not that 'Shunshin no Shisui!' scarefest," he grins. "It sounds like some stupid wives' tale—'Eat your carrots, or Shunshin no Shisui'll get you!'"

"You were known for other things in Konoha."

"Yeah, my doryoku—you know Anko went around calling me The Mind Rapist for a bit? That was a bust, honestly. But anyway, you see? I told you we'd fit right in."

_Fitting in _was a misnomer; the sand and wind and nature had worn away their edges, forces as inorexable as that of time, until they had become features of the red-gold landscape themselves. Even Sasuke. Especially Sasuke. Itachi doesn't remember when he first began to lose that grafted feeling.

"Itachi?"

Shisui's eyes are pools of liquid worry. Itachi knows how much it bothers him to go to work leaving problems unresolved, so he lifts his hands, draws him closer, tastes the forgiveness in Shisui's lips before he realizes he has given it.

"I don't want you to quit," says Shisui in his ear. "You just keep teaching those little demon offspring—what is it, how many apples you'll have if you take away—"

"That is _math_. Civilians learn math. And I do teach other subjects."

"Sure, sure. Glue some noodles on cardboard and look, you've got a Suna hourglass! And there was that one time you were reading them—what was it? 'Shodai Kazekage: A Children's History—"

Itachi throws a pillow at him. Shisui laughs and flickers around the room, never passing up an opportunity to use his legendary shunshin for frivolous idiocy, and the room is a white storm of feathers and linen before Itachi remembers that they only just cleaned. Still, this is easy to forget when Shisui's laughing, taking him by the wrist to spin him, to press him against the wall and kiss him until his eyes close and his knees give out under him.

"Sasuke still loves you," he babbles, once again failing to grasp the concept of timing. "Just…just in a different way. And you _know _it's in his best interests. I just…I hate seeing you looking like your best friend just died whenever Sasuke leaves."

Itachi glares at him.

Shisui laughs. "Sorry. In bad taste?"

"Very."

"Oh, come on—I should at least get to rib you about that whole Mangekyou thing—"

"You are late for work."

"I'm a _bartender_. You're really going to get on my case about proper work ethics?"

"I am, actually."

"That's because you're the prickiest prick that ever…pricked," says Shisui in what he obviously believes is a sample of stunning eloquence, and ruffles Itachi's hair before pulling on his head covering. "Well, I'm off." He puckers absurdly. "A kiss for the man of the house?"

"Technically, I am the one with the respectable day job," says Itachi, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

"Right you are, little missus," says Shisui, and salutes. Itachi hits him with a genjutsu. This is really all that can be done with Shisui when he's in a mood like this. It's a very simple genjutsu, just a bucket of water dumped over his head, but that's all they need their genjutsu for these days.

That's all, and that's good.

Shisui sputters and coughs away the illusion before glowering at Itachi and managing, somehow, to twinkle his eyes like some kind of awful movie extra at the same time.

"You can get used to Sasuke loving you differently," he says. "You've gotten used to me doing it, haven't you?"

He's gone in the flicker of his namesake, but the truth of his statement stays in the room with Itachi, and somehow, that's almost as reassuring.

**~X~**

Sasuke had started crying before he knew they were leaving. He wanted to go home. He wanted his mother. He wanted Itachi to tell him what was happening. He wanted, wanted, wanted—and Itachi had enveloped him in the sleep genjutsu and sent him head over heels into unconsciousness without a moment's hesitation. Still, when he had gone back to Shisui, who was staring at their small campfire as if he could will it out of existence, he hadn't quite known how to excuse what he had done.

Shisui had narrowed his eyes at him. "You think he's going to be okay with this?"

"Of course not," said Itachi.

"You'll have to tell him something."

"I am aware."

"You're doing it before we hit Suna."

"Shisui—"

"You _have to_," snapped Shisui, and Itachi had only ever heard that tone a handful of times in his life, so he kept quiet.

He had been a wartime child, raised to ignore the pain caused by truth, and this was something he only realized when he told Sasuke that they would never be coming back and Sasuke began to scream.

"You're an idiot," Shisui said quietly. "You should've told him maybe in a while—a vacation—"

"I cannot _lie _to him," Itachi had said, and Sasuke had started crying. When Itachi tried to comfort him, he slapped his hands away and said "Kaa-chan, kaa-chan" over and over until Itachi felt the sting of tears at the back of his eyes as well. He had thought of the Uchiha crest Shisui had torn out of his clothing, its frayed seam, and the overwhelming sense of displacement he felt at leaving Konoha with everything he owned in his knapsack. Sasuke needed a bath. Sasuke needed warm food, not soldier pills and dried fruit scrabbled together by two desperate teenage boys. Sasuke needed a bed with pillows. Sasuke needed parents, but not theirs—never theirs, who had forsaken them both for a dream and a war.

The days until Suna were harsh, jagged-edged, run through with Sasuke's sobs and Shisui's silence. Moments turned themselves over like broken glass in his palms, and Itachi felt lost when he looked at his white hands and was unable to see blood. He couldn't touch Sasuke. Sasuke was a distant star at that point, lost in his own orbit, light-years away from Itachi in his celestial groove as the leagues separated them from Konoha, and the days from one another.

By the time the gates of Sunagakure came into view, he had made his decision.

"Shisui," he had called, "I need you to…to do something for me."

His best friend, who by that point had rock dust caught in his curls and a strange sort of weariness in his eyes, had turned and walked straight past him as if he knew exactly what he was asking. Before crossing him, he caught Itachi's shoulders and kissed him lightly on the forehead, just a touch. Contact. Reassurance. Something—

"You're doing the right thing," said Shisui. "It's in his best interests."

And then, without giving him a chance to lose courage, Shisui had knelt before Sasuke and said, "Say goodbye."

"What? Itachi—" was the last thing Sasuke said before Shisui's sharingan spun, and his most dangerous jutsu fell into place with the clean, lethal snap of a guillotine.

Threads broke.

He remembered telling himself: surely there could not have been anything strong to begin with, if it was severed with such ease?

In Suna, he turned their official letter over to the appropriate office and acquired the wax hourglass seal that meant their applications were under consideration for Wind Country citizenship. He asked for an audience with the Kazekage and explained that he had an orphaned cousin with him whom he and Shisui were unable to care for. He registered Sasuke in the adoption agency. He bought an apartment with the pooled stipend from his ANBU funds and Shisui's police money. He took a post teaching children at the civilian Academy. He listened as dark-haired dark-eyed little Matsuda Sasuke chattered away to him about how lucky he was to be adopted by his nice new family, and how he had been an orphan all his life and loved the feeling of having parents and a sister for the first time, but he did wish he had a brother, too, and, well, _see you tomorrow, Itachi-sensei_!

It was only after all of this that he went home to his apartment and did things like hold the kunai against his wrist, and one day Shisui had grabbed his chin and looked him in the eye and sworn he would use the technique on him, sworn he would make him think he was someone else too, if he didn't get his act together and stop being _a fucking moron_, or something like it.

He might have taken him up on it too, if it hadn't been for Shisui's sixteenth birthday.

**~X~**

"You're coming out with me to celebrate," Shisui had said. "It's my sixteenth birthday, and you're fourteen, so you're legal. Let's get a drink."

"Fourteen is not 'legal.'"

"It is in Suna—the logic is, if you're old enough to kill people, you're old enough to have a drink. If you don't want one, let's at least go _somewhere_."

Itachi had declined and said he had to correct tests, even though this was always done in a five-minute flash of misused sharingan speed and they both knew it. Still, Shisui wheedled, and Itachi staunchly denied him, and then Shisui shrugged blithely and tripped out the door in an obviously staged fashion.

"Fine," he called behind him. "After all, if you'd had your way, I wouldn't even be _having _a sixteenth birthday."

So Itachi went.

Shisui in a fit of deranged theatricality had acquired two horses from somewhere, supposedly on loan, and so they rode out into the desert after spending a few red-eyed minutes watching riders on their way out of the Suna gates. Shisui seemed to have some unknown destination in mind, and this was fine with Itachi, for whom the city was still too _big_ to feel wholly comfortable in.

By that time his eyes had become accustomed to the fact that Suna had its colors, as did anywhere else, although in comparison to Konoha it had seemed barren at first. But there were colors there. There were colors, perhaps, in a more permanent way than there had ever been in Konoha—endless shades of red and gold, the kissed pink of dunes in the early morning, and the unthinkable, shattering blue of the desert twilight, like a single bass note plucked over the world. Ahead of him, all these colors dappled a mosaic over Shisui's skin, flushing the skin of his neck and the pearl-curve of his jawbone shades Itachi had never seen before, the familiar made unfamiliar in a way that shook him.

Shisui slowed his horse to a trot.

"Why are you slowing?"

"Because we're here."

And suddenly all the colors vanished in a burst of green—green like a stroke of paint on the dunes, brilliant with the shine of liquor in a crystal glass, an intoxicating, mind-whirling canopy of green. It was a deeper green than he had ever seen in plants. Later he would think it was a sad sort of green. It had grown in the harshest of places, where the boughs of desert trees hung as if pulled towards the earth—and yet, bizarrely, heavy with benevolence, for their leaves were pregnant with droplets of water. In the spartan Suna rationing system Itachi had become used to, this was a sensuous sort of sacrilege.

"Where are we?"

"It's an oasis," Shisui had said. "Don't you miss the green, in Konoha? Sometimes I do."

He did miss it. He stepped into the oasis and suppressed a shudder at the shade, the coolness that swept over his skin like liquid. Shisui had shrugged out of his robes and was rolling up the legs of what looked like a pair of old jonin trousers. With a yell that Itachi remembered from so many sun-stained summers, he ran across the carpet of grass and flung himself into the freshwater spring, breaking into a clean backstroke almost as he hit the surface of the water.

"Come on in!" he called, and since it was his birthday, Itachi did so.

They had learned how to swim during an emergency evacuation during the war, but they made a habit of doing so afterwards as well, because according to Shisui's sister, the best way to get rid of a bad memory was to make it into a good one. She had been an unreliable mentor on the best of days, but this turned out to be solid advice—slowly, bloodstained docks became warm piers, screams in the water became bubble-blowing contests, and silent, bedraggled clansmen became just Shisui, spread out beside him and drowsily muttering that Itachi's hair was getting in his eyes.

Itachi didn't want to mention any of this, so he had said, "We are probably contaminating the spring."

"That's what _water purifiers_ are for," Shisui had said. "Besides, it's not contamination. It's an addition of concentrated sexiness." He had flipped his hair ridiculously, which came out looking rather stupid, as Shisui's curls had never done well with water.

"Sexiness that is, in this case, still germ-infested and hence a contaminant."

"At least you concede my sexiness," said Shisui, and paddled over to him leering in a disturbing fashion. "I knew you would, someday."

"Clearly your mind-control is backfiring upon you," but this had been the wrong thing to say, because then the mention of Shisui's jutsu had shut Itachi down like a city bereft of power, and he had never known what to do after that. But Shisui had simply cast him a warning look and then propelled himself up onto the bank, where he had unwrapped a package from his satchel and laid out all sorts of things: mochi, a few sticks of dango, a small and misshapen birthday cake that Itachi realized with horror must have been made by Shisui himself.

Shisui had misinterpreted his stare. "Save it, okay?" he had said defensively. "I wanted a cake. Come here and eat it."

That had been Shisui's sixteenth birthday, a pathetic meal in a beautiful oasis, and Itachi had felt with a sinking trepidation that nothing had really changed; they had run away, but they hadn't gotten very far. Gathered around Shisui's shoulders he could see the clan members, Shisui's older sister, _Sasuke_, and with every bite of powdery cake he could taste the birthday feast Shisui should have had. Without warning the heavy sky upended itself, dumping its load of stars and liquid night over the oasis, and Itachi, a castaway clinging to his plank of eroding wood, was lost in the terrible anonymity of endless water.

"Good," Shisui had said, reaching out and tracing the sudden wet trails on Itachi's cheeks. "Just get it all out."

And he had, silent tears in his hands and then on Shisui's chest as his best friend moved their meal aside and took him in his arms, always that six-year-old with curly hair who had offered a cousin shelter during the war. Around them the oasis grew permanent, its sad green trees and furiously joyful water a paradox that seared itself into Itachi's memory, the newest of the safe places he would always, _had_ always, learned along with Shisui's name.

"Why did we do this?" he had asked, knowing that asking this was a knife in Shisui's side, worse than that day at the Nakano's bank. At the time it had seemed like the only thing to ask.

Shisui had smiled. He had a smile that could be held, and that could hold you in turn—Itachi wanted to climb inside it and surround himself in Shisui's warm competence, his assurances, his steadiness.

"You see Sasuke every day," he had said. "He loves you. He tells people about you. They're new streets, and it's a new school, and _fine_, he has a new name, but he has you, doesn't he? And you have him."

"And you?"

Shisui had looked genuinely surprised at the question.

"Well, I have you, so…"

"I am not your little brother," Itachi had said petulantly, making Shisui laugh and agree.

"No. No, you're not."

Itachi had fought the urge to sulk by training his eyes on the oasis' green trees, which he wanted to memorize before the time came to return home. Then he realized that he could take as much time as he wanted; there was nowhere to go anymore, just the necessity to be where he was, with whom he was, as the world slowed itself to the pace of his heartbeat and time became a freshwater spring that they could float in. For once there was no concept of duty—simply of being, something he had never fully grasped. The ocean whirled again, but on his back, he could see the stars in the sky, and the solid line of their magnetism that held him to the earth.

"What now?" he had asked.

Shisui's shadow had blotted out the stars. He had run his fingers through Itachi's wet hair and tugged gently at the strands, so that his head tilted up, and the pale column of his neck was exposed to Shisui's fingers.

"We make a bad memory a good one," he had said, and his mouth, warm and sweet against Itachi's, erased the years behind them.

**~X~**

He's spent so long in his memory that he's surprised that the storm outside hasn't yet begun.

Itachi sits up in bed. He pulls on his robes without pausing; it's been two years, and at this point, he can do it without thinking. He straps a canteen to his belt and tucks a double-wrapped kunai into his pocket—old habit, and one that is, slowly but surely, beginning to fade with the caress of sand and sun and other, sweeter caresses, although Shisui nags him to keep the kunai with him anyway.

"We have amnesty on paper," he's in the habit of saying. "Still doesn't mean I trust Danzo and his fuckers."

Sunagakure nights are filled with what Itachi knows now as the sense of being—citizens meandering with nowhere to go, a flood without direction, so that he hangs suspended as one among many. People are going indoors upon hearing the storm in the air. They're all used to it, and they smile and call to one another as they take shelter. Some even wave at Itachi as he passes—parents of his schoolchildren, probably, and after years the thought of this no longer holds the old bitterness.

For the school is a glowing golden place, where he can always find Sasuke, where for six hours out of every day he can show Sasuke anew what the world is like through his eyes, and when he returns home it's to another radiant place where Shisui often regales him with his terrible cooking and his wonderful kisses and things are—things just _are_.

…That's all, and that's good. Itachi thinks he can smile at that, and as he tells himself that, he finds he already has.

Somehow, every place in this new life is a place filled with sunlight.

The bar where Shisui works is one in a strand of neon lights, strung in a smooth curve as if at the railing of a ship, and when Itachi enters it's into a flood of warm flame-light, where patrons grin at him as he enters. The storm is nothing here. Shelter is one with entertainment, with drinks and dances, with safety under Shisui's discreetly red eyes. People swim about the floor like fish in a shallow stream—no destination, but still, a place where they need to be. A place where he needs to be.

Shisui is cleaning a glass. The curve of his wrist is efficient, tasteful—he was a shinobi once, Itachi thinks, and he still knows how to perform his duties. But Itachi has never seen him smile at his completed work before, and now that he is, duty doesn't seem like duty anymore. He's just taking off his hat when Shisui looks up and sees him. He smiles. And Itachi's gotten used to so many things--full-body robes and hats, rationing water, writing _Matsuda Sasuke_ atop grade cards—but he'll never get used to that smile, and at this point, he doesn't want to.

"Hey!" says Shisui. "What's the special occasion?"

Itachi takes a seat at the bar.

"Nothing," he says, and as Shisui takes his hand across the counter, he thinks perhaps _everything_ would have been a better thing to say. He smiles, and Shisui's eyes become little crescents of mirth. Tan face, creased laugh lines he never had in Konoha—and yes, Itachi sees, in Suna sight is secondary, but you can actually see your happiness if you want. You can still say its name—a few syllables tripping across your tongue, sweet-tasting and alliteratively lovely and _Uchiha Shisui_, it's that easy—

"Nothing," he repeats. "I just wanted to be here. Do you need a reason?"

Shisui squeezes his hand.

"Nope," he replies. "That's all I need."

**~X~**

_end_**  
**


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